


Methods of Extraction

by cyprianlatewood



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, I'll add more tags later but this is it for now, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-26 22:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30113145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprianlatewood/pseuds/cyprianlatewood
Summary: Quentin is on his way to the afterlife, but there's something in his way. Yes, it's another fixit fic.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	1. One Cake

**Author's Note:**

> I always wondered why the old god cake didn't show up in more fixit fics, so I just had to stick my neck out and give it a try. Hope you like!

Quentin felt strangely numb as he boarded the train. The only sensation that really pierced through the fog was the sharp plastic edge of the metro card digging into his palm. He looked around and saw that most of the seats were full of passengers, all looking equally numb and staring off into space. The atmosphere inside the train felt stale, desaturated. He knew that he should panic, run, try to get out, but his body seemed to move of its own accord, and he found himself in a seat before he could take control. 

He slid into the plastic divot, and felt nothing, no warmth left by a previous passenger, no discomfort from the jolt of the train as it started moving again. It continued to make stops, where passengers got off and on, but there were no station announcements. Anyway, he didn’t know when he was supposed to get off. So he just rode on and on. 

He had a vague sense of something slipping away from him as the train moved past each stop. A memory? If it was a memory, of course he wouldn’t be able to tell that it was gone. But somehow his mind felt emptier, lighter. He had no sense of how long he had ridden. There was a moment, after one station, where he felt a brief disorientation - how had he gotten here? Why was he on this train? A moment where his conscious mind tried to rise above the molasses and take stock of things. But he sank quickly back under the spell of monotony, and continued to ride. 

Suddenly, something did change. the train stopped at a station, and this time, it didn’t continue. The passengers continued to sit still, not getting restless as you might expect, but nonetheless he got the sense that something was out of the ordinary. The longer they stayed, the more he felt some kind of agency returning to him, and he started to look around, even get up and walk to the front of the car. 

“Excuse me?” He called out into the heavy silence. “Excuse me, conductor? Is there a problem with the train?” 

Still not quite sure why he was even on the train, he nonetheless wanted to make some sense of the stoppage. He reached the compartment where the conductor might be and knocked on the door. At first, nobody answered. He jiggled the latch but it was locked. Then it opened very suddenly and almost knocked him over. An ancient woman peered out. She was wearing what seemed to be a very old conductor’s uniform, threadbare and torn in places. 

In a creaky voice, she spoke, with a tone of incredulity — “what in Hades name are you doing? Get back to your seat!”

Quentin quailed under her piercing glare. “Well, ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you but I was just wondering, umm. The train, it, uh, seems to have stalled, and I guess I was just thinking you might know why, so. Umm. Do you know why the train has stalled, ma’am?” 

She opened her mouth like she was about to scold him again, but then stopped. She looked at him closely. “There is something different about this one,” she muttered, seemingly to herself. She looked off into space, continuing to move her mouth silently.

“Umm, excuse me? Ma’am? Sorry, what do you mean, different?” 

She looked up at him for several moments, confused, and then seemed to remember her surroundings and became suddenly brusque, business like. “I have to call Command. Stay right there, young man,” and she disappeared back into the compartment and slammed the door. 

He looked around, bewildered. “Stay right here? Where else would I go?” he wondered aloud. He waited, patiently, as waiting was something he was very good at. But when he felt a rush of air enter the train from the other end of the car, he turned to see what was causing it.

As he turned, he felt a sudden clench of dread, probably the first real thing he had felt since he boarded the train, and saw — well, he wasn’t quite sure what he saw. He couldn’t actually look at it directly for some reason, but he got the sense of both pervasive decay and dazzling vastness. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but he felt a revulsion that was hard to ignore. 

A gravely voice that seemed to come from both great distance and right inside his left ear spoke. “Quentin Coldwater?”

“Uh, no?” he answered. He actually wasn’t quite sure who he was at the moment, but he was pretty sure his name wasn’t Quentin, although there was something about that particular turn of phrase…

“Brian, then,” the voice tried again. 

He nodded slowly. That felt right. “Yes, yes I think so. Brian. That’s my name, I think.” He looked up, blinking, trying to focus on the creature at the end of the car. “And who are you?”

A pause. Then, with some reluctance: “I am known as Cronos. It seems there has been some kind of mistake, your being here on this train. I got a call from dear old Mnemosyne back there.” 

Brian swiveled back around to where the woman in rags was glaring at him snidely. 

“You’ve got something old in you, not supposed be down here,” she complained. “My brother’s come to remove it.”

Brian felt a spike of terror. “Uh, remove it? Like from my body? Like, are we talking violence, here? What is it?” 

Cronos sighed, clearly annoyed. “No, not violence. I’m not really allowed to do that kind of thing anymore, unfortunately. At least not down here. Anyway, it’s spread all through you now, so I can’t remove it from your body. What dear sister means is that I am removing _you_. All of you. From this train, from the underworld. And what _it_ is, apparently…is cake.”

“Cake?” Brian’s terror was overtaken by bafflement. 

“Yes, apparently you had some old god cake from that idiot receptionist guarding Tartarus, and then you brought it back with you to Earth, and now all the ‘old god’-ness is mixed in with your blood and can’t really be taken out. The train won’t go to the next station so long as the you are here with those bits of Titanic protein floating around inside. A nasty side effect of the wards down here, set up by my dearest idiot children to keep their big bad parents away. So, for the sake of all the poor souls on this train just wanting to rest in peace and oblivion, I’m here take you back to Earth now and wait for your body to use it up.”

The bafflement was here to stay. “Sorry, back to Earth? I don’t understand. Where am I now?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Have you forgotten that much already?!” Cronos shot a glare to Mnemosyne. She shrugged, all faux-innocence. 

“You died! You’re in the Underworld, on this train to the afterlife! Hades knows why you ended up here so quickly; normally people spend ages in the waiting room here, but someone really wanted you out of the way quickly.”

Brian felt a wave of hollow relief. So he was dead, but he was also being resurrected before he really had time to even realize he was dead. But then, _oh god_ — “Wait, what happens to me after my body ‘uses up’ the cake?”

“Oh well, I guess then you just live out your life on Earth like normal. I don’t know, we don’t really pay attention to what goes on up there. Just please, try not to die before then. We would have to go through this all over again, and the whole trip is really inconvenient for me.”

“Uh, okay. Just umm, Just one more question.” 

Cronos sighed. He gestured as if to say, _go on_.

“Right, thanks. Umm, so how will I know when it’s gone? The, umm, cake?”

“Oh, you’ll know.” The abominable creature laughed, in a sort of sinister way. 

Brian shivered. _What the fuck_? Oh well, problem for another day. He was going back to Earth. 

“Alright, oh wise one,” he tried, sounding more cheerful than he felt. “Lead the way.” 

And he started to move towards the end of the car. But before he even made it two steps he felt a thick blanket of darkness falling over him, and then nothing for a while.

——

Eliot was having a weird dream. He couldn’t quite place where he was. It seemed to be some variant of the Neitherlands, but also maybe Venice? He was wandering around, looking for anyone, even those pesky cannibals, but he was all alone. It was horrible, being completely alone like this. _Honestly, how are you surprised it has come to this? You always push everyone away._ It was his father’s voice, somehow, he knew. But his father wasn’t there. He was looking for someone, maybe? He couldn’t remember who, but it seemed important. If he could just find the right fountain…

He rounded the corner of some _truly_ anatomically-disturbing topiary and came upon a fountain he had never seen before. The lid was tightly closed, and was overgrown with vines that looked a lot like tentacles, oozing some kind of rusty fluid, and the air smelled strongly of cinnabar. He heard something inside the fountain, crying out, banging on the lid. _God, how typical. Something is locked inside my subconscious, and I’m afraid to let it out. Come on dream, you’ll have to do better than that._

He tutted and moved his fingers in a slicing motion to cut through the vines, but instead of releasing the fountain they just kept growing back faster and multiplying with each cut. He was starting to sweat, slicing faster and more frantically, until…

He jolted awake. He lay rigid, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for his harsh breathing to slow. _Just a dream. Just another damn dream._ As he calmed down, and returned to reality, he became aware of another body in his bed. This was, of course, not an unfamiliar feeling - just not one he had felt in quite a while. For a moment, he was afraid to look over and see who it was — Hamish? No, he thought ruefully. He would never be so lucky. Todd? God forbid, he shuddered, he hoped to never fall that low. No, he wasn’t that hungover, so it must have been something he actually wanted to happen. Or thought he wanted. It could only be — 

Yep, he confirmed as he turned his head. Charlton. 

The memories came back, too fast, and he felt a headache coming on. It wasn’t, _bad_ , per se. Just kind of empty. Disappointing. Not something he wanted to repeat, that’s for sure. He’d had plenty of empty one-nighters before, but he had a feeling this was going to be a more awkward morning-after than he had dealt with in a while.

Thankfully, Charlton was not awake, and at the very least not a sleep-cuddler, which, _thank god_ , because he really hated that ( _you used to love sleep-cuddling_ , a pesky voice reminded him in his head). Though it made him feel like an asshole, and not the good kind, he slunk out of bed and out of the room before Charlton could wake up, grabbing his clothes from the chair on the way out. 

He waltzed to the bathroom completely naked. Who would see him, after all? And tried to keep his mind carefully blank as he showered and dressed. He automatically redid his makeup and hair, trying not to think too much about how he looked so tired and old and lonely and pathetic, because _that way lies madness._ He took a deep breath, straightened his vest and opened the door. Straight onto Charlton’s sleepy face. _Fuck_.

“Hey, Eliot.” That completely unvarnished, earnest voice, weighed down by sleep but somehow still eager and saccharine sweet, invited inexplicable irritation in waves pulsing into Eliot’s mind like some kind of acid reflux. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

“Morning,” he said, carefully, looking straight ahead at the wall behind the man’s head. They stood there awkwardly for a few moments. Charlton had pulled on his underclothes, which looked frankly almost more ridiculous than the Todd-like apparel he had been wearing last night. Eliot felt a rush of sympathy for the poor man. Obviously, none of this was Charlton’s fault. He just felt very, _very_ out of his depth here. 

“I just need to, umm,” Charlton stuttered, gesturing. “Use the bathroom.” 

Eliot unfroze. “Right, of course, my apologies,” he babbled as he jumped quickly to the side. Charlton rushed into the bathroom and closed the door. Eliot slumped back against the wall and rubbed his face. What a mess. After a few moments he headed downstairs to fix himself a Bloody Mary. And breakfast, of course.

—-

Brian woke up the next morning and was immediately aware of two things:

1\. His couch was definitely not built for sleeping on.

2\. He _stank_. 

Like, really stank. What the fuck was that _smell_? Burnt plastic in brackish water with decomposing diapers? He made his way to the shower, wobbling as he went, trying very hard not to hurl. Everything ached. His bare feet were inexplicably caked in muck. He remembered having an awful dream about a train ride that never seemed to end, and some kind of mysterious creature talking to him, something about cake? Ugh, he must have really gotten drunk last night. 

He wracked his brain, trying to remember what he had been doing. Some kind of department event, most likely. Columbia professors were all such hot messes, truly. Himself included. He decided to do the thing he did most often these days when he hit upon a missing or inconsistent memory (although it didn’t seem to burn holes into his skull to think about or cause electric lights to burn out and shatter like it normally did) — distract himself with something else. In this case, coffee. 

He dressed, grabbing a gray button-down and jeans from his closet at random. He went into the kitchen and looked around for coffee, but as he wandered around the room, he gradually realized that something was very _weird_ about the whole scene. There was dust everywhere. The lights and electricity were somehow still on, but when he opened the refrigerator he was hit with a blast of rotting food smell that made him gag all over again. There were dishes in the sink that looked like they were fossilized. Everything looked as though somebody (him, presumably) had left this apartment one day several months ago, with no idea that they would never be coming back. 

But how was the power still running? How did he get inside? Where was the landlord? The questions were overwhelming. He felt a panic attack coming on, and somehow it felt familiar despite him having no memories of panic attacks in the past. He sat down heavily on a chair at the kitchen counter, trying to make sense of it all. What he wouldn’t give for coffee, Jesus. 

And almost as suddenly as he thought it, he was standing outside a coffee shop a few blocks away. _What the hell?_

Had he just lost time? Or somehow - teleported? His head was throbbing now. He walked into the shop, immensely grateful that he was at least dressed, although only wearing socks. Hopefully they wouldn’t kick him out. Thankfully, the barista was so tired she barely even glanced at him as she took his order. He realized he didn’t have his wallet, and started to panic again, before he reached into his pocket to find that, miraculously, he did indeed have exact change for his coffee, although he was 99% certain the coins hadn’t been there when he left the apartment. 

He paid for the coffee and left the shop in a daze, stopping outside to sit down on the bench and take a deep inhale of the precious liquid inside. He drank quickly, burning his tongue, but not caring because nothing in his entire life had ever tasted so good as this. Finally feeling like he could function at a basic level, he walked back to his apartment and let himself in with a key that somehow also just happened to be in his pocket when he needed it (he could have _sworn_ it wasn’t there before), and sat back down on the counter chair to think. 

What was the date? Where were his things? Did he even have a phone? Or his satchel? God, his books, his laptop! He looked around frantically and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his satchel and beanie in a pile by the door. He fished his phone out from the satchel. There were several notifications, emails and text from various colleagues, most recently from April 2019. He looked at the date on the phone. _October 2019._ Six months since the last message! Well, it explained the state of the apartment. 

And then he looked again. _Fuck_. It was a Wednesday! Wasn’t he supposed to be teaching? Or clearly not, since everyone thought he had disappeared. _God_ , there were probably missing persons reports filed about him. He googled himself, and was shocked to see that not only were there no results for him, he wasn’t even listed on the Columbia staff directory. 

He looked back at the email notifications, and they all seemed to just…stop, after a day or so of annoyed-but-not-yet-worried “where are you”-type messages. The sudden halt in communiques seemed too coordinated to just be the result of a general lack of caring. It was almost like his identity had been wiped, like all these people and all the internet had been made, all at once, to believe he just never existed. And yet, the apartment…It hurt his mind to try and figure out, so he just pushed it away.

He went to campus (the normal way, on the subway, not by sudden apparition) to confirm his suspicions. He wandered the halls of the literature building (his ID seemed to work on the gate, mysteriously, despite his name not being in the system), but nobody he recognized acknowledged his presence beyond a few “random stranger passing by in the hall” friendly nods. He made several awkward half-hearted waves to people he once thought of as friends or colleagues before giving up after one too many confused looks. After that, he just wandered around numbly through the quad. The only thing that could explain all this, really, was a thought so preposterous he barely wanted to think it. But once it was there, it insistently pushed every other thought out of his head — 

_The dream was real. It really happened._

He sat down on a bench with his notepad. He tried to think back through the dream, to write down everything he remembered. He could recall fragments, the train, the conversation with the creature (Cronos?), the name the creature had called him (Quentin?), but the pieces didn’t seem to fit together. He couldn’t remember why he was on the train or where he was going or why the creature was there. 

Frustrated, he closed the notepad and made his way back home, noticing as he got up to leave that he had been sitting in the quad for several hours, and the sky was now dark blue. He realized he was starving and picked up some Thai food to take home. He spent the rest of the evening clicking through the web, catching up on news. Bizarrely, a VERY active serial killer seemed to have been operating in New York in the few months right after he apparently disappeared — _nope, brain, don’t go there_ — but then apparently the trail went cold and the murders just stopped in the middle of the summer, so. Not him, presumably. He hoped. Ugh.

He shut the laptop, and turned on the TV, just to let the noise wash over him. He lay down on the couch (yes, he was a masochist, okay) and started to drift off. Right before he was about to fall asleep he remembered Cronos’ other words, echoing ominously in his head as sleep overtook him. 

_You died._


	2. Two Cakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a meet-cute of sorts

Eliot was halfway through his second Bloody Mary (light on the blood, heavy on the vodka) when Charlton timidly made his way downstairs. Eliot knew he was being petty, but he continued to act as though he was alone, avoiding eye contact. Out of the periphery, however, he was following the man’s careful movements as he gingerly sat down on the sofa with a slight wince (Eliot had to stifle a preening sneer at that motion - it reminded him of his days as King of the Cottage and satisfaction at ruining all those first-year boys). 

After a few moments of fidgeting, Charlton cleared his throat loudly and abruptly, and despite having been very aware of Charlton’s presence, Eliot still jumped a bit. _God_ , the man really wasn’t subtle. “Christ, Charlton. A little warning might be nice,” he muttered.

“Eliot,” he began, and his voice cracked a little, so he took a breath and started again. Eliot was still studiously avoiding his gaze. 

“Eliot, look. This” — he gestured between them — “was perhaps a bit ill-advised, I think. And, whilst I did enjoy the — the fuck,” Eliot snorted, and Charlton glared. “I think we both agree that it need not become a regular thing.”

Eliot was stunned. He had expected to have to let the poor man down gently, but here he was, being let down himself instead? He looked up, feeling strangely betrayed. “What happened to ‘emotionally available and planning to stick around?’ ”

“Don’t forget ‘knows you well.’” Charlton said sadly. “Last night was very nice, but it wasn’t what I hoped to have with you. I could feel that you were just going through the motions. It’s clear that your heart isn’t in this, Eliot. Your heart is still with —”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Eliot spat, voice venomous.

“— your past,” he went on, a bit rattled by Eliot’s sudden rage, trying to steady his voice. “And I didn’t truly expect sudden sweeping romance. I thought maybe I could give you a respite from the pain, break through the walls a little, maybe even eventually pull you back here, but last night, I realized…I don’t think you want that. I think you want to stay right where you are. And I do plan to stick around, and be available, but maybe in a different sense from what I originally intended. For now.” 

Eliot was speechless. Charlton continued. “I think it may be the most prudent course, in fact, as I will be your student shortly.” 

A harsh laugh. “Well Charlton, you clearly don’t know me that well after all, or you would surely have saved this rejection for after I had a chance to play out my greatest teacher-student roleplaying fantasy.”

Charlton just shook his head, with that annoying look of sadness again. “Eliot, you’re still hiding. I thought maybe I could help you out of it, but I see now that I would just be helping you disappear further. You need to figure your fuck out. And we need to find your friends, which I am happy to help with as much as I can.”

God, Eliot’s headache was getting worse. This was too much soul-baring honesty for this early in the morning. “Okay, Charlton. I’ll take the hint. I’ll take the weekend to “figure my fuck out” away from here. And I hope you have some luck with the finding-my-friends research while I’m gone, because I am pretty sure if Margo wanted us in New Fillory, we would be there by now.” He turned on his heel and exited in true old-Eliot fashion.

He wasn’t bitter, not really. Ironically, _he_ hadn’t wanted to continue things with Charlton after last night either. But it stung his pride, really, to be so soundly rejected by someone who literally hadn’t had sex in hundreds of years. Ugh, why couldn’t he catch a break? What he really needed was a weekend in the city. Lights, music, oblivion, NSA sex. _That_ sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered. 

He wondered for a moment if he could crash at the Penthouse with Kady, before nixing that idea. He didn’t really want to deal with her tough love and patronizing looks right at the moment. No, he could easily get a suite at the Gansevoort with a little magic and charm and enjoy himself in style, like the old days. Maybe he needed a corset and a bit more make up than he did in the old days, but he was sure he could still score at any club he chose. He made his way to the portal, already dreaming of the way the music would feel vibrating all the careening thoughts away, all the warm bodies pressed around him. Charlton was right - he _did_ need to figure his fuck out, and New York fucking City was the place to do it.

One of the Brakebills portals, thankfully, opened right into the back of a hokey crystal shop on Christopher Street, so he hardly had to go far to get to his precious Meatpacking District haven. He strutted out onto the street, taking in that perfect Saturday-morning Manhattan energy, feeling like he was breathing again for the first time in days. First stop - coffee. He turned right and made his way down the block to an old favorite. He was a few storefronts down from the shop when he stopped dead in his tracks. 

All sound dropped away and a buzzing seemed to fill his ears as he took in the sight before him. It couldn’t be. He felt himself growing faint as his mind scrambled to find rational explanations. It was just a stranger and he was seeing what he wanted to see. He had more vodka than he thought. Charlton had put something in his drink. He was still asleep and this was a very long and extremely detailed dream. He was back in the Happy Place. But then, as if the figure on the bench sensed someone staring at him, he turned his head and looked up, straight at Eliot, beautiful brown eyes wide with confusion and mouth just slightly open, like he was about to say something but didn’t know what it was. Eliot’s heart stuttered. “Q,” he breathed. 

—

Brian wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like time was just passing more quickly than normal. Weeks disappeared while he sort of just - existed. He didn’t look for another job, or try to socialize. Money and food just sort of appeared, when he needed it. He felt like he should be questioning it, but honestly? He was just so _tired_. He didn’t know what happened to those missing months, and he didn’t want to look too deeply. He didn’t actually want to know the truth behind the words, ‘you died.’ He wanted to ignore it, go through basic motions of getting through days, and hope that it would eventually make sense. Or maybe, he would forget all of it and just move on. 

He sometimes thought about trying to get another professorship, if not at Columbia, then the New School, or NYU. He wondered if he should go to a bar, try to meet people. But mostly, he just stayed home and watched TV, or weirdly, played cards. He was strangely obsessed with playing cards. Where on earth had that come from? 

Also, of course, he drank. One night, after a bit too much wine, he went on a buying spree and ended up with a bunch of puzzles of gradient patterns and pixelated abstract images. He didn’t know exactly why, but the action of placing colored squares in random orders soothed him. He also went back to that same coffee shop, every morning. It was the only thing that really put him in the world, placed him in reality for a part of each day, so he knew time was passing and he was really alive. 

Today, for example. He woke up, dressed himself automatically in a brown button-down under a corduroy blazer, navy chinos and oxfords. Stretched the too-small oatmeal-colored beanie, that he wore irregardless of the weather, over his head. Walked to the shop, got a coffee and sat outside on that bench, people watching. Absentmindedly scrolled through the news on his phone. Just like every day. 

But today, he was halfway through his coffee, and he suddenly got this strange prickling feeling at the side of his neck, the way it sometimes went when you felt like someone was watching you. He turned his head and, instinctively, his breath caught. Standing stock still in the middle of the sidewalk, some 20 feet away, was the most beautiful person Brian had ever seen. Tall, elegant in a kind of tragic way, turned out in a waistcoat and tie, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, wild black curls roughly pulled back into a half-bun, a hint of darkness around his eyes. And he was staring in terror at Brian like he was seeing a ghost.

Without even really knowing what he was doing, Brian stood up and sort of stumbled backwards, away from this beautiful and frightening vision. But his movement seemed to galvanize the man into action. “Q, wait!” he cried, and _oh._ That _voice_. It rang in his ears, reverberated in his skull, calling up something, something…And the man was walking quickly, taking long strides, gracefully twisting to maneuver around the crowded sidewalk, and suddenly he was there, and Brian was staring up into his hazel eyes, and he was drowning, and then the man reached out with a shaky hand, whispering “Q” like it was some sort of prayer and Brian felt himself flinching, looking down. 

“I’m sorry, I think you must have me mistaken for someone else.” Trying to worm away from this magnetic presence that was unsettling him so deeply. 

The man gripped his arm, hard, to keep him there, keep his attention. The hand was not shaking now. Those fingers, long and heavy with costume rings, were stronger than he expected. “Quentin. It’s me, Eliot.” His voice urgent, his eyes pleading, but also maybe glazed with nascent tears? 

Brian made himself stop, clenched his jaw and looked up. “I’m sorry, I wish I could help you, but I’m really not Quentin, and I really don’t know you.”

Eliot looked lost for a moment, and then angry. “Who are you, then, huh? Why are you here? And why are you taking the form of my dead lo— friend — what is it you want from me?! Haven’t I lost enough?!” His voice rose into a strident shout by the end. 

Brian looked awkwardly at the patrons around them, who were looking away and mumbling to themselves. Whatever, this was New York. A gorgeous man having a melodramatic breakdown in the middle of the Village before brunch was nothing they hadn’t seen before. They would get over it. Something nurturing in him took over, though, and he gently pulled Eliot away from the crowd down to a more secluded part of the block, soothing him.

“Okay. It’s okay. I am not whatever you think I am, whoever you think I am. I’m just Brian. Former literature professor, currently unemployed, completely harmless. I am _really_ sorry that I seem to remind you so much of your — your friend, but I assure you, it’s all just a misunderstanding.” 

But there was that gravely voice in his head again. _You died_. And then another part - _Quentin Coldwater?_

Eliot seemed to calm down a bit as Qu—Brian pulled him away from the crowd, but at those last words, he clearly heard the glitch of uncertainty that made its way into Brian’s voice, and looked at him closely. “Wait. Brian? You taught at Columbia?”

“Umm, yeah, why? Did you go there?”

Eliot laughed wetly. “Hardly. But…okay, listen, this maybe actually makes sense.” He ran a hand over his face, mumbling to himself. “Fuck, if this whole thing has been some epic Fogg manipulation, I’m going to actually kill him. But that really would be some meddling on a level I couldn’t really imagine from him, and honestly, to what end?” He took his hand from his face. “What do you remember about the last few months, Brian?”

“I uh, well, uh…” and he found that he couldn’t, actually, come up with a reasonable answer. 

Eliot nodded, seeming to come to a resolution. He looked like it was physically hurting him to hold back, but he was doing it anyway. “Okay, right, so I think we need to sit down somewhere and talk. Preferably not the place where I just made a scene. Someplace public where you don’t feel threatened. Washington Square?” Quentin nodded, and he turned to walk there but Eliot brushed his elbow as he turned and in that moment he felt a sudden jolt and they were standing in Washington Square park. He scrambled back. Eliot was looking at him in terror again. “Q, what the fuck?”

People were sort of staring for a moment, but then they clearly decided they had imagined the two strangers blipping in out of thin air and went about their business. Brian had had enough of this shit.

“No, _you_ what the fuck!” He was starting to feel like he might cry. “I woke up one morning, weeks ago, after the weirdest fucking dream I have EVER had, and suddenly my life was gone. Months had passed and it was like I didn’t exist! Nobody knew me. And weird things are just, happening, all around me, still, like this weird, _apparating_ thing. And food, and money, other things, just like, are there, when I need them! I don’t understand. And _you_? You think I’m someone else? Someone named Quentin Coldwater, whoever the fuck he is. I’ve never seen you in my life, but I feel like I know you. What the fuck is happening to me!?” And he felt himself crumpling, hands around his head, a whine starting deep in his throat that he couldn’t control. 

Eliot rushed forward, and wrapped his long arms around him, well-clad knees straight onto the pavement, tucking his head under his chin like it was second nature, stroking his back as Brian sobbed into his chest. “Shh, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay sweetheart, I’m here. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know how you are here, but you were gone, you were just — _dead_ — and, and…and now you’re alive again, somehow, and we’ll get everything back to the way it was, I promise. All that matters is you’re alive. Thank Hades, Q, you’re _alive_!” And then he felt the other man shaking with sobs too, and even though they were clearly crying different kinds of tears, there was some solidarity in that moment, some comfort, so Brian just let it be. 

Finally the sobs subsided and they leaned back to look at each other. Brian gave him a tentative smile, and the man smiled back at him with a wide, incredulous open mouthed grin that transformed his entire face. Brian was hypnotized. He crouched motionless as the man reached out with his thumb to brush his bangs from his eyes. “I miss your hair long,” he said softly. _My hair’s never been long,_ he thought, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment. He let Eliot take his time, feeling the roughness of his shaky fingers wiping tears from his cheeks, the warmth of his gaze that seemed to literally drink in all it landed on. 

“Okay, Brian.” Eliot said at last. “I’ll tell you what I know. And then we’ll try to figure out what happened, together. But it’s not a pretty story. So we should probably sit on an actual bench before we continue.” They maneuvered to an empty bench and he turned to face Eliot, who seemed intent on maintaining a point of physical contact throughout, which Brian couldn’t really begrudge him at this point, and would be lying if he said he didn’t also take some comfort from. Finally, they were sitting facing each other, opposite knees touching, Eliot’s fingers on his shin. 

“I probably shouldn’t tell you everything right now. It’s clear that we need some serious magical intervention, and I don’t want to jeopardize that by revealing too much backstory. But here’s the gist. Okay? Here goes. There once was a man, named Quentin Coldwater, who was a magician. Several months ago, his best friend Eliot, also a magician, did something very stupid and got himself possessed by an unspeakable evil. Meanwhile, some other very stupid people tried to protect Quentin and his other magician friends from some other bad people by blocking their memories and spelling them with alternate identities. See _Brian_ , exhibit A.” 

Eliot took a deep breath, appearing to steel himself before rushing through the rest. “Somehow, these magician friends found each other and undid the spell so they could be themselves again, and joined together to fight the aforementioned unspeakable evil. Then they got the evil thing out of Eliot but Quentin-then-Brian-now-Quentin-again did some really dumb shit while getting rid of the evil thing that resulted in Quentin getting disintegrated and becoming very…very dead.

Then a bunch of other bullshit happened that we don’t need to get into right now and Eliot’s friends all abandoned him for another dimension and Eliot was about to have a fabulously and not-at-all-desperately debauched weekend to forget all about it when he suddenly finds himself face to face with his previously presumed-deceased friend, Quentin. Who is now, inexplicably, Brian again. And who, to be very clear, Eliot is extremely beyond-words-happy to see again, Brian or not.” 

Brian stared at him. Then he laughed, a little hysterically. “I’m a magician?! Am I hallucinating?!”

Eliot looked at him in shock, and then gave a surprised laugh. “If you were, how would asking me help?” Brian felt something zing in the back of his mind. But it was gone before he could place it. He shook his head, incredulous.

“Right, so, if all that’s true, then how did I get back here?”

“I don’t know, _Brian._ You tell me.”

He looked at him, brow furrowed. Then he had a thought, and his face cleared and his eyes brightened. “Okay, well actually, maybe I do have something. I wrote some notes, about the dream I mentioned, in here somewhere,” he looked over to dig through his bag. wWhen he looked back up Eliot was gazing at him with such fondness, that it made him huff in embarrassment. 

“What?” he asked, snarkily. Eliot laughed again, a bright, clear sound that shocked both of them. 

“God, it really is you,” he said in quiet awe. Brian blushed and looked down at the notepad to avoid saying anything stupid.

“Okay, so, I wrote down, ‘train to nowhere,’ ‘Cronos,’ and ‘cake.’ And, funnily enough, ‘Quentin Coldwater.’” He looked up. “I don’t really remember it now, but I must have heard it in the dream. There was this train, like a subway train, and we were just stopping at stations but I didn’t know where we were going or when I was supposed to get off. And also, somehow, I didn’t care. All the other passengers were the same way. Just…vacant. 

And then the train stopped, and I guess it shook me up a little, so I got up to find out why, and there was this weird lady driving the train who called for her brother, Cronos? I guess? And Cronos had a very creepy vibe - I don’t remember what he looked like, but he said I had to leave the train, that I was in the Underworld, that I died but I had eaten some cake that kept me from moving on, somehow, so he was going to take me back to Earth. And then everything went dark and I woke up on my couch and discovered that i had been gone for months and everyone had forgotten about me. And all the other stuff I mentioned. I know, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s what I remember.”

Eliot shook his head ruefully. “Makes about as much sense as literally anything that has happened to us in the past couple years. Well, look. We need to take you back to campus, get Lipson to look at you. Clearly, this is not some sinister plot by Henry, so I don’t think there’s any harm in it, and we need to get your identity back, if we can. I’m kind of invested, as you can probably tell.”

“Campus?”

“Yeah, Brakebills. Our Alma Mater. I actually teach there now. It’s a long story.”

“What if you can’t? Get my identity back, I mean.”

“Well, I guess then we figure it out from there.” But the thought clearly unsettled him. He lip trembled slightly, and the fingers on Brian’s shin squeezed involuntarily. Then he shook himself and stood, holding out his hand. “Brian, let me be the first to escort you to the Brakebill’s school of Magic.” 

As they walked, Brian bombarded Eliot with questions about magic, but Eliot just smiled enigmatically and refused to answer any of them. “All in good time, darling,” he said, as he led him into down the steps into the portal storefront. 

“Eliot, this is just a bunch of new age nonsense,” he protested as they entered the store and saw all the crystals and dreamcatchers everywhere. But then he saw the portal at the back, and his eyes widened. “Is that—?” 

But before he could finish his question, Eliot pulled him through the swirling hole out onto the sunny green lawn of a pristine collegiate campus. He gestured with a flourish. 

“Welcome to Brakebills, Brian.”


End file.
